a small dream realized

[clickie]

I have been obsessed with sloe gin (in concept) for a pretty long while, because it's gin! flavored with a plum-like fruit! that tastes slightly almondy! These are all things I love! However, I have not been able to find the real thing in the US: up until now, the only kind in America has been crappy De Kuyper stuff, which to me doesn't seem to be

Comments

[zyrya]

I always wondered what it tasted like. I thought it would be bitter, because sloes are bitter, but maybe the English have refined, polite tasting sloes that waft languidly through a Merchant-Ivory country estate.

[clickie]

I believe that it the magic of gin that makes it good. I like this quote from one of the NYTimes articles: "They are the brutally sour and astringent fruit of the blackthorn tree, a spiny shrub that grows untamed in the hedgerows that line the counties’ fields and roads. That they seem to have no known purpose is a tribute to the practical creativity of the farmer: if it grows, find a use for it."

[zyrya]

Thus my confusion! Sloes are notoriously bitter ... in the Olden Days sloes were squeezed onto childen's fingers to deter nail biting and thumb sucking. Sloes aren't Merchant/Ivory extras, they're Dickensian street thugs.

All hail the gin.

[asd109]

Sloe Gin Fizzes were a drink of choice for me in college! (Though undoubtedly made with the crappy sloe gin)

[pecosy]

Me too! And more recently I was all sad when I bought a bottle of sloe gin and realized how icky it was. I'm so inspired by Daisie's tales of actual pleasant-tasting sloe gin.

[asd109]

I have made my peace with being a froofy girly drink kind of girl.

[pecosy]

This reminds me of the time I was buying for my underage sister and her friends, and one friend had given her a $10 bill with the instructions "Get me as much Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill and Mickey's as this will buy." Ugh, that must have made for a rough night.

hot?

[booxntea]

It's still hot in the summer? That must be nice.

Boston is covered with a rainy, damp layer of depression occasionally interrupted with heat waves so humid you can't enjoy them. Booze helps.

[sisyrinchium]

Now I'm all curious about it. Sounds like something that could be seriously awful, or very nice. (Okay, that's true of almost all hard liquor, but seems more true of things like sloe gin, absinthe, that Croation stuff...)

[sisyrinchium]

Oh, now I see that sloe is blackthorn. Heh. I just killed one of those in my yard. Maybe I'll let the next one go and see about making liquor out of it. Mmmmm.... not. The almond flavor is most likely cyanide from the seeds, typical of the Rosaceae. Some is okay, but I don't know how much some is.